


that's just what i'll do

by mccalled



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Epilepsy, Gen, Shopping, erica pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-23
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 06:33:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/771130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mccalled/pseuds/mccalled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Derek pulls into a parking spot at the mall, and Erica looks around at the other cars, confused.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“What are we doing?” she asks. Derek doesn’t strike her as the type for impromptu trips to Pottery Barn, but she reminds herself that she doesn’t know what type he is at all. Maybe he needs a fake mahogany vase for his condemned building.</i>
</p><p>Erica grows up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> series of short erica-centric vignettes that i've been sitting on for a while but wasn't sure what to do with, so i've decided to post them for the [erica appreciation week](http://radiantreyes.tumblr.com) over on tumblr. i'll be posting them throughout the week.

When Erica was little, she used to put on her mom’s heels and walk around the house until her dad got tired of the clomping noises and made her stop. Even as a kid, she knew it was horribly cliché to wear your mom’s makeup and shoes and pretend to be an adult, but that didn’t stop her from looking in the mirror and imagining them in her size anyway.

“When I’m all grown up, I’m going to wear nothing but heels to my big fancy job, and I’ll be taller than anybody and I’ll make loud noises on the floor when I walk so everybody will know I’m there,” she would say, and her mom would just smile and finish braiding her hair.

She was eight and grinning down at an amazing pair of too-big blue wedges when she tasted copper for the first time. She sprained her ankle on the way to the floor, and smacked her arm against the side of the table. The bruise on her arm took a week to heal, and her ankle took longer than that. The seizures didn’t go away. She stopped putting on her mom’s heels.

 

Derek pulls into a parking spot at the mall, and Erica looks around at the other cars, confused.

“What are we doing?” she asks. Derek doesn’t strike her as the type for impromptu trips to Pottery Barn, but she reminds herself that she doesn’t know what type he is at all. Maybe he needs a fake mahogany vase for his condemned building.

She’s not stupid. She saw right through it all - the drop in his voice, pulling her real close. It knocked the air from her chest and made her head feel fuzzy with heat and for once, she _wanted_. It worked, but it wasn’t the red of his eyes or the warmth of his hand on her ankle. She wanted what he could give her, and she took it.

He’s just a nice car and a quick fix to her. But if he wants to walk around looking for the cinnabun with her in tow then whatever, she’ll give it a shot.

“You can get what you want. I’ve got all afternoon,” he says with a shrug. She stares at him, confused. Not cinnabun then.

“What?” she chokes out, and she’s sure her eyes are reaching comical levels of huge.

“Clothes. Hair. I don’t care, but I don’t think you want to keep wearing those, do you?”

She looks down at her oversized sweater and PE pants. They’re what she was wearing when they took her to the hospital, and it was all she had to put back on when Derek asked if she wanted to get out of there. His eyes are disinterested, like her clothing needs have nothing to do with him, but he’s tense across his shoulders like he’s afraid for her answer - like all he really wants is for her to say yes and spend the next few hours crippling his bank account.

“I’m not sure this is appropriate behavior for around a 15 year old girl,” she says, matter of fact.

“There are a lot of things that aren’t good for 15 year olds,” he says after a moment. “I’m pretty sure shopping won’t kill you.”

She just crosses her arms and lifts her eyebrows, and he copies the expression. He’s...really good at it. Like scary good at it, and she spares a moment to examine his eyebrows, and then the rest of him. He’s tight with tension, and he doesn’t know anything about him, but for some reason she can’t bring herself to say no. She huffs, just to be difficult, and pushes the door open.

The mall freaks her out. She doesn’t tell Derek this, but she’s sure he notices the way her eyes stay attached to the ground, instinctually avoiding the possibility of eye contact with girls she might know. He doesn’t say anything.

It takes half an hour before she remembers that it’s the middle of a weekday, and the chances of her running into a Lydia Martin knock-off are incredibly slim. The weight lifts from her chest, just a fraction.

The hulking mass of her ridiculously attractive Alpha-bodyguard keeping pace next to her doesn’t hurt either. She tells him as much, testing out a tone that she thinks might be teasing, and he just snorts quietly in response. Her hand absently moves to her hip, feeling the tender skin under her fingertips and if she focuses real hard, thinks she can feel it knitting back together, skin and sinew starting all over.

She goes for a haircut first, just a trim and and some bangs, because she’s stalling and doesn’t think she’s ready to attempt the stores just yet. Derek sits quietly in the chair next to her playing absently with his phone while the stylist does her job. She gives him a tentative smile when their eyes meet in the mirror, still unsure what the whole point of this even is, but going along with it for his sake. She’s a giver.

She yelps as the first lock of her hair falls to the ground, and his lips quirk upwards and she doesn’t know that she would really classify it as a smile, but she calms a little, and watches are her hair slowly changes shape.

The clothes, on the other hand, make her feel like she’s drowning and her head spins, overwhelmed and thoroughly terrified and completely unsure about where to start.

She thinks Lydia Martin must be doing something right. People fear her, but still want to be her friend - like a fucked up high school stockholm syndrome. Her clothes are pretty and scary at the same time, all fitted and structured. They apparently do something for Stiles too and she’s over that whole thing, but it’s a thought that stays in the back of her mind while pushing racks of patterned skirts and button-ups out of her way.

The new girl’s clothes are nice too - Allison whatever. But Allison is taller and freer, like she gives and helps and cares to whoever asks. Erica doesn’t know if she wants that same openness, so she trudges past the floral dresses and bright colors diligently and keeps looking.

The heels are what do it. She stops suddenly to stare at them when they catch her eye in a window display, almost causing Derek to run into her back in surprise. They’re tall. Taller than anything her mom owns, and they’re loud. She bites her bottom lip, and when she finally looks up, it’s only to see Derek already walking into the store and signaling a clerk.

Things fit into place after that. She finds that she likes lace, and leather, and solid colors. She likes jackets and fitted jeans, and Derek hands her his credit card without a word and waits awkwardly outside while she pops into Victoria’s Secret.

“Are there others?” she asks later, sitting across from Derek at a table in the food court, hungrily devouring her tray full of Sbarro. Her hair falls over her shoulder and into her line of vision, and it takes her a second to remember that it’s her’s - shorter and straighter and not frizzing at the ends like she’d been electrocuted at some point in the day.

“Scott McCall,” Derek answers, and she can practically see the pain it’s causing him not to roll his eyes.

“Really? Scott McCall?” she snorts, stabbing at her pasta with a laugh. She furrows her eyebrows after a few seconds and tilts her head. “Actually, no. That makes a hell of a lot of sense, to be honest,” Derek does roll his eyes at that, and she decides to file it away as something to pick at later. “So, is he going to be my like, packmate or whatever? Is that how this works?”

“I’m working on that,” Derek says, and his tone is one of a long suffering coach trying to get his players to actually run towards the correct end of the field.

“Well, you just let me know how that works out for you,” she says. “Anyone else?”

“Jackson Whittemore. Maybe,” Derek says.

“Maybe?”

“It’s complicated,” Derek says, glaring down at his own untouched food.

“So, there’s Scott McCall kind of, and Jackson Whittemore maybe,” Erica lists, counting on her fingers. “Good track record.”

“And Isaac Lahey for sure,” Derek adds quickly, like he’s desperate to prove that he’s at least broken even on his beta count. “He’ll be your packmate.”

“Isaac? The quiet one who works at the graveyard? What, did you just go straight down the lacrosse team roster? Chess club not good enough?” Erica laughs, and Derek cracks a smile at that. She feels a weird amount of pride each time she gets him to smile, and chews her next bite with a happy hum. She can feeling something changing. She pushes her hair back, silky against her hand, and her foot nudges a bag on the ground, and her chest swells with something powerful.

“I like Isaac,” she says quietly a minute later. “He never laughed.”

She doesn’t expand further, but the look Derek gives her lets her know that she doesn’t need to. His eyes drop a fraction, and he gives her a nod.

He drops her off at her house after dinner, and she carries her bags inside a little guiltily. Her dad’s in insurance - she knows how much money Derek must have stashed away, but the charges for an entire new wardrobe, haircut, and about six different shades of lipstick were still enough to make her bite at her nails nervously the entire ride home. When she’d asked him if it was okay, a bit belatedly through the back seat littered with shopping bags, he’d just shrugged and said. “If I’m going to spend it on anything, it might as well be for my pack,” and didn’t take his eyes from the road, so she dropped it and tried to quell the tingle in her toes at how he said _my pack_ , the most steady she’d heard him all day.

The bags weigh heavy in her hands as she climbs the stairs to her room, but she can’t help the giddy noise she makes when she sets them on her bed and starts pulling everything out piece by piece.

She spends the rest of the night trying everything on for a third, fourth, fifth time - pairing things together to see what looks good with what. She pushes aside her old loose jeans and cardigans and makes room for the skirts and belts and jackets that she can’t seem to tear her eyes away from.

It takes the whole morning to figure out how to curl her hair, and she doesn’t get to school until lunchtime, but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t get a sick kind of pleasure in watching every head turn and the dumb look on Stiles Stilinski’s face and the sweet crunch of the apple before she walks out.

Something is wrong with Derek - he bites teenagers, lives in a train station, and gives more half-answers than real ones, but she looks at her hip in the mirror, new skin blending and filling in the gaps where his teeth dug in, only faintly red now, and she thinks she might be okay with it.

The bite was one thing. She would have happily settled with just that for the rest of her life - even if the epilepsy wouldn’t kill her, it was still _killing_ her. He kept going, and he settled in. So he could give her half answers, and could be kind of sketchy at times, but she’s not stupid. She can see that he cares - like, really cares, and at some point through the day he stopped being just the alpha that bit her, and somehow became _her_ alpha.

She kind of likes that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> vignette the second, for the [erica appreciation week](http://radiantreyes.tumblr.com). enjoy!

Kanimas.

“That’s not even the tip of the iceberg,” she says to her ceiling when she’s finally back home. She can still feel the poison in her veins, tension pooling in her stomach, chlorine in her nose, and she knows sleep is a lost cause.

Derek told her about the hunters and the shift. He hadn’t told her about the lizard people. Or the lack of time she would have to spend with her mom, or the rage boiling under the surface at any given moment.

She rolls with it - it’s easier than letting something slip and having to deal with the fallout. It’s not all bad anyway - she likes Isaac, who is all of the nice pieces of herself that she can’t seem to hold on to anymore. And she thinks she could love Boyd, steady and infallible while she feels perpetually ready to rip apart at the seams.

Boyd is rarely angry. Even before. He was lonely and sad, but it wasn’t anger that drove him to say yes to Derek, and it shows in how he takes to the bite. Isaac has been forcibly molded into the nicest person who just _tries_ really hard to be an asshole, but he has a light voice and a soft spot for animals. He has to force the rage out on a normal day.

But Erica feels it bubbling underneath her skin. It’s not hard to fuck with Allison, or yell at Scott, or hurt Stiles. She does it with a smile, because that’s what everybody else has been doing to her for years.

She kicks off her shoes and groans into a pillow.

Isaac is like a sunray or a gust of wind, natural and happy. Boyd is like mountain. 

Erica feels like an explosion.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part the third! make sure to check out [erica appreciation week](http://radiantreyes.tumblr.com) if you haven't already!

“Have I told you how great you’ve been looking lately?” her mom says at lunch through a mouthful of salad.

“I’d been saving my allowance for a while, decided I wanted some new clothes,” Erica shrugs, the lie falling through her lips too easily.

Friday was their failed attempt at capturing Lydia, and her hand still feels off from the venom Alison shot at her. She’s simultaneously pissed off and impressed, and doesn’t know if Allison’s someone she wants to rip apart or have on her side. It’s a feeling she’s been confronted with more and more as of late.

“I don’t mean the clothes,” her mom says, and Erica looks up at her. Her mom is smiling with her eyes, and she looks happy. Erica swallows hard and takes a deep breath, looking away.

“I’ve been feeling better,” she says.

“You’ve been on top of your meds?”

“Yes,” Erica says, quickly taking a huge bite of her BLT and chewing slowly. She’s two for two.

“You know, I saw a pair of blue heels at Nordstrom the other day. They looked just like those ones you used to steal from me when you were little,” she says before leaning in just a little more, like she’s telling a secret. “What do you say?”

Erica licks her lips, tastes the lipgloss sticking to her tongue. Her mom grabs one of Erica’s curls and tucks it behind her ear, tugging playfully.

“Sure,” Erica smiles, looking up. “But maybe not heels. I think I’ve got enough of those for now.” 

She wore the heels for a few weeks out of sheer determination and an obsession for them that probably borders on unhealthy, but she’s smart enough to realize that heels aren’t always the best choice. They make her tall and loud, but she feels unsteady. She hurt her ankle when the kanima knocked her into the wall by the pool, and it healed after a few seconds, but it still felt like before. They’ve mostly been retired to the back of her closet, there and ready if the mood really strikes.

Her mom just nods and goes back to her food. “Sure thing, baby. I accidentally grabbed your dad’s credit card this morning,” she winks, and Erica snorts. “Have you decided if you want to take me or your dad to practice driving yet?”

“I was thinking you. Your car’s bigger. And dad lectures too much,” she says, and her mom laughs.

“He gets that from his dad. You should have seen your grandpa at our wedding when the minister forgot to ask if anybody objected.”

“Did he want to?” she asks, and this is news to her.

“No, he just didn’t like that they were doing it wrong.”

Erica laughs into her food and for a split second, feels irrationally angry at Derek for taking this away from her. She reminds herself that this was her choice, tries to remember what she gained in return. It’s hard to do when she’s laughing over a pair of horrible multi-colored platform shoes with her mom, chewing slowly on a cinnamon roll and letting the sugar roll over her tongue. She walks behind her and tries not to imagine her in trouble, captured or hurt, just because she made the selfish decision of saying yes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (shhh don't tell the other parts, this one is my favorite)

Erica is mad at Stiles.

She’s mad about how stupidly smart he is, and how well they work together looking for answers. She’s mad that he’s the one that held her while Scott was dealing with Allison, and she’s mad at the way he didn’t let go, and how he drove like a crazy person to Derek’s, how he pushed her hair back, how he rolls with the punches just like she does.

She’s mad because he understands _way_ more than he should. He’s not even a werewolf, but he gets all of the bad parts of it thrown at him with none of the supernatural perks, and he just takes it all and holds it to his chest without a word.

“I have to figure out a way home,” she mumbles, half asleep but forcing herself awake so that she can figure stuff out.

“You don’t just stay here?” Stiles asks. Scott and Derek are outside the train car talking, but she can’t even bother the effort to listen in. Stiles is sitting against the wall of the train, adjacent to the one she’s slumped against. He’s not holding her anymore, but his legs are curled lazily, his knee touching lightly against her side.

She glares at him, because _what_. She’s also mad at him because he’s an idiot. “No, I don’t stay here. I have a house, dumbass.”

“I just thought - you know,” he mumbles, gesturing with his hands. She thinks he’s trying to point somewhere towards Derek, but it’s the wrong direction. Erica furrows her eyebrows, but drops it, too tired to deal with stupidity right now. She tells him as much, and he gives a short burst of laughter, like it took him by surprise that it was there at all.

“I can take you home, if you want,” he says, shrugging. “I’ll have to drop Scott off anyway.”

She just looks at him for a moment and nods, matting her hair even further against the wall. Stiles gives her that weird smile of his, the crooked one that should be a smirk on anyone else but somehow isn’t on him.

“Thanks,” she says. “It’ll have to be a while though. Can’t go home like this,” she gestures vaguely towards her bruised arm, healing slower than she’s used to. It’s covered in blood, and she hopes Stiles has napkins or something in his jeep, because Derek sure as hell doesn’t have any here. “I’ll just wait for my mom to go to bed if it doesn’t heal in time.”

Stiles looks up sharply at that, and she can practically hear something click in his head. “Your mom?” he asks.

“Yes, my mom,” she says, increasingly convinced of his idiocy. 

“Of course. Your mom. Good ol’ Mrs. Reyes,” he says, recovering quickly.

“She doesn’t know about all of this,” she says. “I don’t want to tell her. She’ll just end up hurt.”

Stiles nods quickly. “I get that. Better than you’d think.”

She smiles, and it’s quiet for a moment. She’s thinking about her mom, not anything specific - just vague images crossing her mind. Like a general mom brain-blanket. Her mom would probably be fleece, if she were a blanket, soft and warm, _god_ she’s so tired. She digs the balls of her hands into her eyes, flashes of light appearing behind her eyelids, and suddenly she’s laughing. She doesn’t know why, because nothing about this is funny, but it bursts out of her and just keeps coming, short giggles giving way to shaking shoulders and tears in her eyes.

“You should have - it was so dumb. My hand was spasming all night after I caught that, that fucking arrow of Allison’s. I had to try and eat lunch the next day with my left hand so she wouldn’t ask questions,” she manages between breaths. She glances up at Stiles, who looks thoroughly freaked out for a moment before a grin spreads across his face and he’s laughing too. He laughs with all of him, his shoulders loose and his knee shaking against her side, and she grabs it for support through her own giggles.

“My dad kept asking if my hand was alright, the night it happened to me,” he says once he’s gathered enough of himself to speak. “All night, ‘Stiles is your hand okay?’ ‘Stiles what’s wrong with your hand?’ I just wanted to tell him everything. Each time he asked it just got worse, but there’s nothing to _say_. Oh, just Jackson the invincible lizard creature, nothing to worry about, Dad, wanna order a pizza? Watch the game?”

He looks sad, suddenly, even though he’s still vibrating through a few lingering chuckles. They come over him like waves, spasms of laughter that shake through him and have the opposite effect of what laughing is supposed to do. She pulls at her lip and ducks her head.

“We didn’t exactly sign up for this, did we,” she asks. He shakes his head quietly, but looks up after a moment.

“Well I mean, you kind of did,” he says, because he’s kind of an asshole.

“I signed up for no more seizures,” she corrects. “I didn’t sign up for lizards and Jackson Whittemore trying to kill me, and for lying to my mom. With a bonus seizure to top it all off _anyway_.”

“Fair enough,” he shrugs. “Sorry about that, by the way. The arrow thing. Just, you know - Lydia.”

She laughs, and tries hard to keep the bitterness out of it. “Yeah, Lydia,” she says, rolling her eyes good naturedly. He just shrugs once more, like _what can you do_ and she nods. Gets it.

She’s angry at Stiles because they’re the same, and neither of them really know how to deal with it once they realize just how deep this all goes. They’re just kind of winging it. She’s angry at Stiles, and she’s angry at Derek, and at Jackson, and at Scott. It doesn’t matter - she’s always angry.

What can you do.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> second to last! make sure to go check out [erica appreciation](http://radiantreyes.tumblr.com) before it ends!

“I’m really glad you’ve made friends,” her mom says when Erica walks into the living room. She’s got blood on her shirt, and she’s sweaty and exhausted from the rave, but it’s dark in the room and her mom’s focused on the TV anyway, so she just stands behind her the couch and puts her hands on her shoulders.

She tries not to worry about it, this other lie she’s feeding her mom on the daily. Doesn’t say anything about sinking her claws into Allison’s thigh, or the repairs Stiles had to do on his jeep, or the clunk of her head against the floor when Jackson knocked her out just hours ago.

Instead, she focuses on walking into the rave with Isaac - he’d never been to a party either, and she’d never seen so many lights at once. She had to force herself to stop looking at them directly, and they’d managed a whole hour of dancing and carelessness before everything went to hell. She focuses on lacrosse games with Boyd, and how Stiles wasn’t even her friend, but he still jumped in front of them to block the door against Jackson. It made no sense, but that’s kind of the only aspect of Stiles that makes sense to her anyway.

“Yeah. Friends,” Erica says quietly, trying to believe it enough so it’s not a lie anymore. Her mom looks up at her from the couch, bending her head backwards and smiling at her upside down.

“What did you do tonight?” and she can’t see the blood from this angle, but Erica is tempted to shift so it’s in her line of vision anyway. Maybe if she sees it, she’ll have to finally demand some answers. Instead, she just smiles and turns her head back to the television.

“Just hung out at a friend’s house. Her mom made a pizza,” she says, making sure to smile enough that her mom can hear it in her words.

“Mmm, that sounds nice,” she said, reaching up and rubbing Erica’s wrist. Her fingers are warm, but her wedding ring is a shock against Erica’s skin. Erica holds on for a minute anyway.

“Night mom,” she says eventually, squeezing her shoulders. She trudges back to her room, boots muffled against the carpet, and drops down to her bed, focusing on putting her arms around Scott and leaning close, on throwing Stiles into the dumpster, on taunting Allison just because she _could_. And then on the ease of working with Isaac and Stiles, the rush of relief when the mountain ash line was broken, how she felt it in her bones when Scott howled in pain. Tries to figure out which is the lie.


	6. Chapter 6

She prefers the arrows to the kanima venom, she knows that much. She can still talk, can still yell at Boyd to get out of there, can still break the arrow in her leg and look right back at Allison, see the steel resolve settled in every inch of her body, bow held taught.

Derek bit Allison’s mom, and Erica knows all about the Argents, but she also knows about moms and knows that nobody deserves that. She’d heard whispers about how Allison has apparently gone off the deep end, and Erica doesn’t really know if she can blame her, even facing the proof from the receiving end of her bow.

It’s that thought alone that stops her from shifting and taking Allison down, because she _could_ , but she knows that if it had been her in Allison’s position, she would cover the entire planet in arrows and worse. She pleads and cries, because there’s nothing else for her to do at this point, but she doesn’t attack.

Words didn’t work either, she’s unsurprised to note when she wakes up chained from an unfamiliar ceiling, electricity ripping apart her spine. She hangs her head, but feels almost comforted in the fact that, after just five minutes in the presence of Gerard Argent, she’s suddenly acutely aware of where everything in this town went wrong. 

Nothing really improves after that - months of hell, really - but she’s steady in the knowledge that, for all that Derek and Allison and Jackson and _whatever_ , herself too - she’s not innocent in this, she knows that - have done wrong, she can’t really begrudge anybody anything anymore. This entire town, her entire life, _the entirety of their combined histories_ , are just chain reactions.

Sometimes they start with Gerard Argent. Sometimes they start with brain disorders. She sits, alone and captive, and finds her anchor in that fact. What can you do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> c'est tout! thanks for following along! remember to check out [erica appreciation week](http://radiantreyes.tumblr.com) if you haven't, there's just a few days left! and i'm also [here](http://mccalled.tumblr.com) on tumblr! have a good weekend!! exclamation marks!!!


End file.
